


Searching For the Edge

by WesternRose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Confusion, Death, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear, Fear of Death, Ghosts, Hermione Granger is a Good Friend, Implied Relationships, Life is hard, Matter of Life and Death, Multi, Other, Resolution, Ron Weasley is a Good Friend, Trauma, Unconventional Relationship, life and death relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WesternRose/pseuds/WesternRose
Summary: "Don't let go."Harry looked up between his lashes, tears slowly dripping down his chin. Knuckles white and fingers clutching the ledge, he breathed heavily."Does it look like I'm going to?" Harry gasped."Yes."
Relationships: Death/Harry Potter
Kudos: 105





	Searching For the Edge

"Don't let go."

Harry looked up between his lashes, tears slowly dripping down his chin. Knuckles white and fingers clutching the ledge, he breathed heavily.

"Does it look like I'm going to?" Harry gasped.

"Yes." They said. 

"Bloody corpse, I didn't mean to end up like this,"

The voice about Harry let out a somber, chortle. 

"I think you did, Master. You've always searched out the edge."

Focusing less on the dark chasms below speckled with stars, spirits, and a safe fate settled, the wizard centered his vision on the being above. Draped in pitch black, looming and humbling, stood the being who forever changed Harry's life, the creature who eternally altered Harry's death. 

The savior of the wizarding world never meant for his existence to end as such: dangling from the edge of eternity while already being dead and gone. Harry hadn't stayed to watch his friends grow old, hadn't waited to see their children grow, or their hearts become wise. No, instead, he was rash and wild like always, an ever consistent Gryffindor. One month went by since the Final Battle than two months, then three, then five, then ten. Hermoine and Ron nursed their wounds and traumas in time, helping one another and healing with the spirit of love. Harry loved and felt loved; everything seemed to be getting better, but as the days went by, the weeks, the months, he felt more bitter. His whole life seemed to amount to the Final Battle; everything after felt... Not quite there; not ridiculously odd, but just off enough to drive him half-mad. Alone in Grimmauld Place, he grew grim and more daring. Hermione and Ron reached out to him, desperately, growing worried. Harry, nobel as a selfish saint, pushed them all away. He was deathly afraid. 

As sad as it might be, he was too afraid to move on; to leave his past for his present and future. If he was born to fight and then suddenly had nothing and no one to fight but himself, why continue at all? Chosen one, savoir, Boy-Who-Lived, Man-Who-Conquered: So many titles to fit so many roles, yet he had never felt so empty. 

Without a role in the world, why bother with anything. Why drift meaninglessly in a hollow world doing insignificant, monotonous actions day by day. Harry had lived through hell and fought for heaven, so why did he have to end up in limbo? 

To overwhelmed yet underwhelmed with life, he made a decision. 

No role, no name that felt right on his tongue, and nothing to live for, he decided that he could no longer live for and in the light. It was time he died for and in the darkness. 

It wasn't complicated, taking his life. It was sadly simple, actually. 

Twelve months after the Final Battle, in a flash of brilliant green light tenderly falling through the Grimmauld Place's windows, he had departed on to his next journey. 

The wizarding world found his body seven days after his death when Ron came to visit Harry. Chaus swiftly ensued. 

Everything that went on in the realm of the living was inconsequential to Harry, though. All that mattered was the afterthought of life. Suprsijnglyly, when he arrived at death, he had someone waiting for him with open arms. The wizard expected his parents, Sirius, maybe even Cedric or Fred. No, instead, he was welcomed in a much more intimidating manner. 

Harry had opened his eyes after closing them for good and saw Death. The being stood tall, looming over his hunched over form. It crouched down to his level, Harry's head still aching from the journey, and it leaned in close to his ear. Harry shivered at the time, feeling the biting cold emitting from its being. It had leaned closer in and said,

"Welcome home, Master. I've been waiting for you." 

That was the precise moment Harry realized that maybe he didn't quite know what he was getting himself into. 

Back to the present, Harry dangled off the edge of eternity and could do nothing but look into the cloaked face of death. Though, its face was no longer covered. Though Harry's vision was blurry with tears, the face of the creature looming above him was even blurrier. The faces and features of all who he'd once loved merging and shifting and morphing into one another, haunting, blessing, and destroying him simultaneously. 

For Harry to look into the face of life and death, love and hate, and to find a resolution in its features would seem impossible at best. But hanging from the edge, heart-aching yet dull, spine twisting and contorted yet still, the diluted fire in his veins flared, and he saw but one form, the only entity that he could ever trust throughout the rest of his death: Love. 

Muscles contracting, Harry gasped as he hauled himself up at an achingly slow pace back to the surface above. Fingernails boring into the dirt, he hauled himself farther and farther away from the edge. Death made no move to help him; instead, it stood ever observing. 

"Death," panted Harry, lying flat on his back, looking up into the nothingness.

"Yes, Master?"

"I don't want to die."

Death dipped their head, bemused. 

"Master,"

"No!" He cried out. "I am nobody's, nobody's, Master! I've never been and never will be!" The wizard curled in on himself, ground chilling beneath his skin. "I'm just Harry, just, I'm just Harry," 

Death sat down, almost floating towards the ground right next to Harry, almost touching. 

"Master," they whispered as light as a fall's breeze, "Together, we are all that will be. You fear death, yet you see I am here before you, and you lack the trembled in your hands." 

Harry looked down. 

"Fear me, fall from the ledge and gaze into my eyes as I watch you drop from the ledge. Fear, Death, Master. For if you fear me, you may indeed find yourself to Life. 

Harry's body shook, like the earth trembling in a sudden quake. 

"But... How, I, how can I be Life when I'm dead? That's, well, preposterous!"

"In time, Master. All will come with time," Death rested its draping cloak onto Harry's body, warming him. Harry curled into himself, searching for the heat. 

"All will come, as long as, as one, we search out the edge."

~End~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank y'all for reading and liking! I really appreciate it ;) 
> 
> Sending love to all!


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